About

The Lenten Lamentations devotional is a collaboration between Dominique Gilliard and Erina Kim-Eubanks, who both live in the Northern California Bay Area. It arose amidst broader conversations with local clergy regarding the importance of lament and the Church’s call to pursue racial righteousness and reparations.

During the Lenten season, a season of facing our humanity and journeying with Jesus toward the Way of the cross, this devotional is meant to be a resource for helping Christ-followers live rightly by remembering rightly. While many American Christians have engaged Lent by remembering the death of Jesus solely as an act that initiates individual salvation, we want to assert that Jesus didn’t just die. He was put to death- brutally crucified and executed by the Roman Empire for resisting the status quo and inaugurating God’s mosaic kingdom. We also acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus is always tied to the re-crucifixion of God’s people throughout history, and so we hope that elevating historic stories of injustice, resistance, and state-sanctioned violence will lead the Church into holy lament and identification with the subversive power of the cross of Christ.

We acknowledge that this devotional cannot capture the full breadth of our country’s broken racial history. Not every story can be told. Not all that needs to be lamented will be lamented. We also recognize that our acts of lament and repentance come from the particularity of our own identities. Some of us enter into lament from the experience of the oppressor. Others enter into lament from the experience of being historically oppressed. Others enter in from a place of feeling in-between.

Despite the limitations and imperfections of our devotional, we hope that this resource provides a starting point for an ongoing journey of remembering rightly, repenting honestly, and responding faithfully. We present it as a humble offering, acknowledging our own humanity and need for God’s Spirit to lead and guide us along the way.

This resource is meant to be used widely, so please feel free to share with others.